(Jan
1)Iqbal's
Carpet (il Tappeto di Iqbal) is what is
now commonly called a "social circus"; that is, an
organization that uses the circus arts to intervene
in the lives of youth who are marginalized or at
social or personal risk. The goal is not to turn out
professional jugglers, clowns and acrobats (though
that may happen), but rather to teach
self-awareness, individuality, collective unity and
self-discipline. Such organizations are found in
more than 80 countries in the world; in the best
cases, they get help from professional circus
companies. (For example, the Montreal-based Cirque
du Soleil donates 1% of its income to such
social action programs as well as providing
technical help and instructor training.) In the
worst cases, they are on their own. At the moment,
Iqbal's Carpet in Naples is pretty much on its own.

The co-op was founded in
1999 by Giovanni Savini in Barra, a section of Naples
in the eastern part of the city. The entire area is
infamous for overcrowding, high rates of sexual abuse
of minors, juvenile delinquency, school truancy and
dropouts—you name it. It's not a healthy place to be a
child. Iqbal's Carpet has now been without a home for
a year, so they are forced to take their activities to
the streets and available public spaces. The building
they were using was taken over by squatters and no one
has done anything about that. A source within the
volunteer organization that runs Iqbal's Carpet says,
"We had 40 or 50 kids here. We could train them, make
sure they got to school, things like that. Now we're
back out on the street." These people undertake to
transform the lives of youth. They deserve a happy new
year.

(Jan 6)Today is Befana, which name derives from
"Epiphany." It is the traditional end of the
Christmas holiday season, the last of the Twelve
Days of Christmas—indeed,
the one, at least in English song, with "12
Somethings something"—or
something. It is one of the two gift-giving days
of the season (the other being Christmas morning)
and, at least in parts of Italy, including Naples,
just as important. Typically, the gift-giver is
represented as a benevolent old crone. (If you are
interested in that tradition, the main entry on
the Befana is here.)
The shops along via San
Gregorio Armeno that specialize in Christmas
items such as Nativity scenes will start shutting
down, although at least a few stay open to catch
the last bit of holiday trade. Various entries in
these pages having to do with the tradition of the
presepe (Nativity scene) displays are (here)(here) and (here). One of the
things that many visitors find amusing about some
of the nativity displays is the fact that they may
contain very "non-Christmas-y" figurines; that is,
while they show the Holy Family, the Three Wise
Men and attendant heavenly hosts, shepherds and
livestock, they may also display figurines of
political figures. Thus, if you want to show your
displeasure with the current mayor of Naples you
can park him way out back behind the stable
somewhere! There is less of that this year.
Unsurprisingly, the new pope, Francis, is doing
well in the displays.

(Jan 11 )The
Carditello Lodge, one of
the 22 royal Bourbon sites from the 1700s, long in
a state of decay, has been acquired at auction for
11.5 million euros and will be turned over to
Mibac (Italian acronym for the ministry of
cultural activities). Presumably this is the first
step in the process of restoration of the site,
located to the south-west of Caserta, midway
between the towns of San Tammaso and Casal
Principe. This comes after the tragic death on
Christmas day of Tommaso Cestrone, the so-called
"Angel of Carditello," age 51, a shepherd who
volunteered his services as a watchman at the site
in exchange for a place to stay for himself and
his family. There is a complete list of the 22
Bourbon sites at this
link.

(Jan 17)Today is Friday the 17th!Unlike many
cultures that view Friday the 13th as
unlucky, in Italy, today is the day of bad luck.
The Friday part may be traceable to the fact
that Christ was crucified on a Friday. In
ancient Rome, it was, in fact, the day on which
all executions were carried out and also the day
when Romans paid their taxes. The number 17 (and
not 13) is unlucky apparently because if you
write 17 with Roman numerals as XVII, you can
rearrange those letters to read VIXI; in Latin
that means "I have lived" and is in the past
perfect tense/aspect (i.e. it describes a
finished action); thus, "I have lived and am
done living. My life is over." So, put Friday
and 17 together and you have a very unlucky day!
In the smorfia,
the Neapolitan tradition of interpreting dreams
as numbers to bet on in the lottery, the number
17 is associated with disgrazia, that is, an
accident or disaster. Thus, in Naples, if you
dream of such, bet on 17 as one of your numbers.
Interestingly, the number 13 is considered lucky in
Italy (as it is in a number of cultures in the
world). In Naples and the Campania region, in
general, you might say "tredici" (13) if you
think your luck has changed for the worse as an
exhortation to regain that luck. Having said all
that, I'm not sure if the word for "fear of
Friday the 17th" is friggaheptakaidekaphobia or friggadekaheptaphobia.
Frigga was the Norse goddess for whom "Friday"
is named. I should stop now. It would be just my
Frigga-luck if my computer started to act x^ci*%tz
...

(Feb 2)The building
in this photo is the Palazzo
Doria d'Angri in downtown Naples. It
was designed in the 1700s by Vanvitelli. (More
details at the first link, above.) It is one of
the most historic buildings in the modern
history of Italy; the balcony above the entrance
is where Giuseppe Garibaldi stepped out on
September 7, 1860 to announce to a cheering
throng that "L'Italia è unita"--Italy is
united--this, after his conquest
of the kingdom of Naples. The scene has
been immortalized in paintings, books and films;
children study it in school and take tours of
the premises. (I, myself, took such a tour, but
they wouldn't let me step out on the balcony. I
had a great speech prepared!) Well, it's too
late for any of that now; the papers have
announced that the building (or at least the piano
nobile, the story above the entrance, the
one with the balcony) is up for sale. That's
right; for only 4.5 million euros (just over 6
million US dollars), you can get this piece of
history. The original notice appeared in the
magazine Case style, describing this
marvel of 18th-century architecture...1050 sq.
meters, late Baroque and neo-Classical, fresco'd
ceilings, grand salons, etc. Needless to say,
there is some consternation that important bits
of history are just being sold off like this.

(Feb 16)No future.
BagnoliFutura, the company that so many
had hoped would play a vital part in the
regeneration of Bagnoli a few years ago, has
declared bankruptcy and its assets are being
sold off. Yesterday, many of the 80 employees of
the company demonstrated at the entrance to the
BagnoliFutura site in Bagnoli (a portion of
which is seen in the photo on the right). As
recently as last week, there was talk of all the
things that could still be done—shops,
residences, even a long bridge from the North
Pier in Bagnoli across the waters to the small
isle of Nisida! To the long-suffering residents
of one of the seediest places in Italy, this is
just more pie in the sky, various slices of
which have been dished up for over 20 years ever
since the Italsider steel mill was torn down.
There would be boat harbors, green parks, this,
that and the other thing. There have been bright
spots such as the opening of the North Pier and
Science City, but, in between, there has been
corruption and mob-driven violence (such as the
arson episode that destroyed the first of those
two bright spots I just mentioned. In the index
(click here) you will
find various entries under Bagnoli and Bagnoli,
Future of if you want to have an overview
of what has happened over the last 10 years. Update here.

(Mar 9)More overbearing
nanny-state interference with the rights of
citizens—thank God! There are many
conscientious dog owners in Naples who scoop up
after their hounds' daily deposits on the
sidewalks of the city. I don't think many of
them live on my street, however. These bastards
(the owners, not the dogs) let Fido run loose
early in the morning before anyone is really out
and about to see what the world looks like. By 9
in the morning my street is chock-a-block with
tug-boat-sized dog turds (TDT). Now the city is
building a data base to match samples of these
specimens to DNA samples taken from the dogs
when they were registered and given a license.
Find the dog. Find the owner. The owners will
then be subject to a 500-euro fine (a hefty
$685). Libertarian, anti-authoritarian
Neapolitans (which is pretty much all of them)
will claim that this is more interference in
local customs and traditions—specifically the
one that says that stepping in the Sirius Stuff
brings good luck (see this
link)!

(Mar 13)Another Ecomonster (a
wonderful Italian neologism) bites the seaweed! We
hope. The papers are pleased that another
unfinished concrete hotel skeleton put up along
the coastline of the Sorrentine peninsula in the
last few years—another little piece of Pukehenge—is
going to be demolished. This one is near the town
of Meta. (The photo on the right shows the harbor
of Meta looking down on it from the north as you
come out the coast road (SS145)
and Montechiaro onto the Sorrentine plain. The
town of Sorrento is visible in the distance along
the coast. The town of Meta is the second of six
along this stretch of coast; they are, in order
from north to south (that is, moving out from
Naples), Vico Equense, Meta, Piano di
Sorrento, Sant'Agnello, Sorrento and Massa
Lubrense, the last town on the peninsula.

The
structure in question is in the photo on the left,
along the cliff face past the harbor. It is in a
part of Meta called Alimuri, which at one
time was the site of an old naval shipyard built
around 1650, during the last 50 years of the
existence of Naples as a Spanish vice-realm. That
was a time when all of the coastal towns along the
peninsula were subject to ferocious raids by Saracen raiders. There
are other such ecomonsters along the coast,
stretching past the town of Massa Lubrense
at the southern tip of the peninsula and around
into the bay of Salerno along the famed Amalfi
coast (behind the mountain range in the background
of the photo). They were mostly put up in the
lawless building frenzy of post-WWII Italy. (This
particular eye-sore has been there for 50 years!)
Some—as ugly and out-of-place as they are—survived
threats of demolition and now thrive as hotels.
But at least the useless skeletal structures are
being torn down. So they say. What usually happens
is that the wild-cat land grabbers sneak in there
and throw up the structure ("throw up," in this
case, is not necessarily a metaphor.) Then they
turn to the city hall and say, "C'mon, it's almost
finished. Give us the license. It'll be good for
tourism." This time, it didn't work. Again, so
they say.

(Mar 15)The Ship Hits the Sand
— (Forgive the euphemism.) Anyone who
lives near a seaport knows that modern aircraft
carriers, modern cruise ships and modern
freighters (container ships such as the one in
this photo) have one thing in common—they are
ridiculously large. They can be over 300 meters in
length and can totally overtax the
facilities of even large harbors in large cities.
The port facilities in Naples are not
insignificant, by any means, but aircraft carriers
seldom come in through the breakwater in Naples
(sailors taxi into the port aboard small
launches). Cruise ships, however, have to
dock and disembark, and in Naples that is a
chaotic nightmare compared to more efficient
facilities at Palermo, Barcelona, Marseilles and
other ports of call on standard
Med cruises. (Cruise ships in Naples dock at
the passenger port at or near Molo Beverello.) Now it
is the turn of the large container ships run by
COSCO (Chinese Ocean Shipping Company — not to be
confused with Costco, the large US retailer).
COSCO is a Chinese company with headquarters in
Beijing; it owns more than 130 vessels calling on
over a thousand ports worldwide. It ranks sixth
largest in the world in number of container ships
and ninth largest in aggregate container volume.

For a number of years, COSCO has stopped at
Naples once a week to discharge the contents of an
8,000 TEU container ship. TEU stands for
Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit. One TEU is what used
to be one standard container, 20-feet long (6.1
meters), resembling a railroad boxcar. Most
containers these days are 2 TEUs (40+ feet); thus,
in this particular case, the ship may be carrying
4,000 containers. Also, the containers may
vary in height and width; thus, a TEU is not a
precise measure, but rather a rough gauge of how
much freight is aboard. Eight-thousand TEUs is a
lot. That single weekly run to Naples accounts for
37% of all container traffic disgorged into the
city! Almost all of it winds up on flatbed train
or truck at shipside for transport to the gigantic
Interport of Naples, the largest Freight Village in
southern Italy, where the goods are broken down
for further distribution to wholesalers and
retailers. COSCO has now announced that after
three years of trying, and failing, to get Naples
to upgrade the facilities of the commercial port,
they are not going to stop here anymore. That is
an economic disaster for the city and is bound to
set off a chain-reaction of lay-offs and
unemployment from dockside to freight village to
wholesaler to retailer. The papers are already
lamenting the downgrading of the commercial port
of Naples to a "regional" rather than an
international one. The potential good news is that
money talks; this kind of threat may actually make
the city do something about the situation.

(Mar 17)The
fourth edition of the Photomed Festival will be
held from May 22 to June 15 in the coastal town of
Sanary-sur-Mer, the island of Bandol and the city
of Toulouse, in the south of France. The guest of
honor this year is 80-year-old Mimmo Jodice
from Naples. Jodice was born in Naples in 1934 and
still lives and works there. In 1969 he
began teaching photography at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Naples, where he taught until 1994. He
had an early interest in arts, classical music and
jazz; in the early 1960’s he discovered
photography. During the 1970’s he was in contact
with avant-garde artists who worked and displayed
in Naples: Warhol, Beuys, De Dominicis, Paolini,
Kosuth, Lewitt, Kounnellis, Nitsch and others.
Over the years, various threads have run through
his work: experiments with the avant-garde, a
surreal and uneasy vision of urban landscapes, and
fascination with the ancient roots of his city.
Collections of his photography are in dozens of
museums around the world and he has published some
50 books of his photographs. The subject matter is
eclectic in the extreme: books on Boston, Paris,
and Naples, ancient Pompeii, Figures of the Sea,
Islands of the Mediterranean, and his eerie, stark
interpretations of the classic statuary in the
Naples Archaeological Museum. Photos such as the
one shown here line the corridors of the
underground metro station beneath the museum.

(Mar 17)ONE
DAY?! - On Sunday, March 15, The National Archeological Museum
of Naples opened its doors to show off the
museum's spectacular coin collection, one of the
most important collections in Italy. It holds
about 150,000 pieces, from coinage of ancient
Greece to that of the Bourbon mint. The name of
the guided tour was Coins and Economy in the
Ancient World. It was a rare opportunity
since the collection is normally not open to the
public (and, no, I don't understand that, either),
made even more precious by archeologists and
historians, experts in numismatics, who explained
everything. Included in the exhibit was the
Farnese collection, created in Rome but winding up
in Naples through the Bourbon inheritance of Charles III. Also
on display was the famous Borgia collection sold
to the King of Naples, Joachim (Gioacchino) Murat, in the early 1800s.
There were coins from the little-known period of
the independent Duchy of
Naples during the Dark Ages. The coin in the
above image depicts Sergio II, ruler of the duchy
from 870 to 878. The coin has a few indicators of
true independence; earlier Byzantine coins in
Naples were in Greek and typically had an image of
a Greek emperor. This has on one side an image of
Saint Januarius (San Gennaro), the patron saint of
Naples, and a Latin inscription identifying him,
SCS IANV. On the other side of the coin is the
ruler, identified in Latin as SERGIU DUX. He is
holding the globus cruciger, an orb topped
by a cross, a Christian symbol of authority in the
Middle Ages. I don't know if the guided tour
included the fascinating counterfeit coins from
the 1700s when interest in Greek and Roman
antiquity was so frenzied that there were not
enough authentic items to sell to Grand Tourists. These
false coins now have their own perverse numismatic
value. (More on counterfeits at this link.) I
don't know much more because I found out about it
all too late to go. I repeat: ONE DAY?! This place
drives me nuts.

(Mar 17)This
is too beautiful to eat! -or- Iuppiter te
puniat gravi trismo! (May the Gods punish
you with lockjaw!) Or at least I think that was
the old Roman curse upon those who would even
think of biting into something this beautiful.
Local culinary handicraft is alive and well in
Naples. I was made aware of this in a small shop
near my house. We were discussing the eventual
repercussions of the COSCO decision to stop
delivering Chinese merchandise to Naples (see
three items above on this page). The local
proprietor opined that maybe it wasn't such a bad
idea since "too much seems to come from China
these days."

"Yes," I agreed, "but that includes a lot of stuff
in your shop, right?" (I had just bought a Chinese
flashlight.) "I mean, look at all these plastic
toys for kids. They're all made in China."

She agreed, but added, "But not everything. Look
at these." There, among all the Chinese plastic
toys, were four examples of what I referred to,
above, as local culinary handicraft. "My daughter
makes these." Indeed, they were good luck charms,
one example of which (photo) is shown here. They
are exquisitely crafted of salt and flour (the two
great symbols of abundance). I asked if they were
edible and I saw the thought balloons forming
above her head, saying, roughly, Good Lord,
where did he park his turnip truck? Nevertheless,
I have redeemed myself. I bought two of them for
my dear niece, Susan, who is about to descend upon
us for a visit. I shall remind her not to eat
them. The items are the work of Rosella Mòntolo,
who makes a lot of other stuff, as I have
determined from her website. But these are mine
and, soon, Susan's.

(Mar 24)Are you "foofing" me?!Foof is one of the onomatopaeic sounds
that Italian humans think their dogs make.
Cantonese dogs go Wo-Wo! In Hebrew, it's hav-hav!
and in Yoruba (a language spoken in Nigeria) mutts
say gbo-gbo! (This is what inspired
the Gershwins to write Let's Call the Whole
Thing Off.)I don't know what this
might have to do with canine or human cognition.
Maybe Noam Chomsky knows. In any event, Foof
is also the name of a dog museum in Mondragone,
just up the coast from Naples. It has just been
given an award as one of the five most innovative
small museums in Italy. The facility was the idea
of Gino Pellegrino, who will travel up to Torino
in a couple of weeks to fetch his prize (I'm
sorry, but I'm brimming with bad jokes about this.
I'll try to curb myself. OK, really—someone please
whack me with a rolled-up newspaper!)

FOOF, seriously, is impressive. There are a
number of separate sections explaining how man's
best friend got that way. These sections include:
Once Upon a Time (canine pre-history and
evolution, relationship to wolves, place in myth
and symbolism); Dogs in Art; Dogs in Cinema
(including, no doubt, this guy);
physical and behavioral characteristics;
relationship between dogs and children; and The
Working Dog. The museum has a 300-book museum and
welcomes visits by school groups. (I delicately
suggest they add a section about the topic
of...well, see the entry for March 9, above, on
this page.)

Featured
on the premises is a donation from artist Paolo W.
Tamburella. They are sculptures of dogs (photo,
right) that were part of his installation of
performance art entitled Opera per Cantalupo
that was set-up in Piazza Plebiscito in Naples in
2012. The reference is to Salvatore Cantalupo,
either a local avante-garde film director or a man
who is often seen crossing that large square,
Piazza Plebiscito, followed by a pack of dogs. I
don't know if he feeds them or if they just like
him. I suspect both. (This is one of the few
episodes of Installation Art here that I somehow
managed to miss. Here is a
link to some of the ones that I did not
overlook.

(Mar 26) Campania
Felix is how the Romans referred to
this area, maybe in happier times. It was a
fertile breadbasket as well as the Roman
riviera — playground of emperors, other
beautiful people and grand poets. (Campania
is, for example, where Virgil
wrote The Aeneid.) Campania Felix
is also the home of my next-door neighbor,
Giacomo Garzya, another poet, and is the title
of his latest collection, 34 poems, each an
image of one of his favorite, secret places in
Happy Campania, places along the Sorrentine
and Amalfi coasts and out on the islands in
the Bay of Naples. It is striking and
intensely personal poetry. (English
translations of six of these poems are at this link. They
vary slightly from the versions in the book,
published this week. All of the poems are
accompanied by my English translations. There
is also an appendix with some critical
commentary in Italian and English.) Yes, this
is a shameless plug. Go ahead, make my day.

(Mar 31)The papers
kindly reminded us the other day of the 70th
anniversary of the last eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
That is not something that one generally brings
up. The last eruption of Vesuvius was in March,
1944. There had been rumblings and various burps
and belches in late 1943, but the true eruption
came on March 18. From my entry on "Recent Eruptions of
Vesuvius":

It happened in full
view of the Allied armies, which had taken the
city of Naples a few months earlier. WWII was
still raging farther north in Italy when
Vesuvius went into what is called an effusive
eruption (less violent than an explosive
eruption, but nevertheless dangerous and
potentially deadly). The eruption destroyed a
number of nearby towns; the volcanic ash also
rendered useless the planes of a U.S. B-25
bomber group parked at the Capodichino airport
in Naples.)

How strange that the papers
should bring this up. It was almost a festive
article, but I guess I see their point; seventy
years is the longest period of inactivity by
Vesuvius in almost 400 years...and I feel
uncomfortable even mentioning that.

(Click on the photographer's name in the photo
credit to read his account of the Italian campaign
in WWII.)